As mobile devices have become ubiquitous, the use of mobile devices to send text, photos, video, and other messages has grown exponentially. For example, some user demographics use instant messaging (IM) or texting applications on their mobile phones more often than they use their phones for making voice calls. A user may prefer sending messages to another user because it allows the other user to respond to the message when convenient. A user may also prefer sending messages to another user because the content of the message may be of low priority and not require an immediate response.
As messaging has increased, the type of messaging has changed. Whereas messaging started as primarily a one-to-one communication method that allowed one user to exchange information with another user, messaging has quickly grown to become a one-to-many communication method. In one-to-many communications, a single user sends a message to two or more other users. Recipients of the message may respond directly to the sender, or may send a response to the entire group for consideration. Such group messaging has become increasingly popular in order to allow social networks of individuals, such as friends, families, or workplace colleagues to stay in touch with one another.
In order to accommodate the rapidly expanding number of messages on telecommunications networks, telecommunications carriers have been required to quickly build out their network infrastructure. Maintaining the necessary routers, switches, billing systems, customer service support, and other network elements required to transmit messages between senders and recipients has proven to be a difficult task. As network traffic has scaled, it has been challenging to build out infrastructure in a timely fashion to handle the increasing number of messages. The popularity of group messaging has only exacerbated this problem. Because a group message may be sent to a large number of individuals, and because each individual may easily respond to all members in the group, the number of messages sent between users quickly grows exponentially larger. In order to accommodate this growth, providers of telecommunications services have been forced to look for strategies that allow the network messaging burden to be reduced, while at the same time continuing to provide high quality and readily-available messaging services to its users.